Yesterday Ed Stelmach announced that his government was going to create some daycare spaces primarily through a $53.25 a month tax break to parents, ironically close to the same amount that parents who get the daycare money that Harper promised, after taxes. Unfortunately for Ed, we can already see that what he's doing is doomed to failure.

So Ed Stelmach is busy running around the province making campaign announcements using public buildings. First we have Stelmach thinly disguising his campaign kickoff speech as a throne speech, then using the legislature media room for his "comment" on the "throne" speech. So in other words, the Stelmach Tories used taxpayer dollars to kick off their campaign. Next we have Stelmach making an announcement using the Capital Health Region's boardroom. When pressed by reporters about the issue, the CEO of the Capital Health Region said that requests are made on a case by case basis and then stormed off. Want to bet that if another party had wanted to use the board room it would have been unavailable? Neither the PC's or the Health Region would comment if the Tories had rented the room or if the Health Region had just given it to them.

Well Ed Stelmach's done it, he's dropped the writ. So we're in a provincial election with the date for the balloting set for the 3rd of March. That means that I'm off on the hustings as well so if I don't get to posting here as often you know why.

I've started a new poll here at Castle Evil. Click here or click on "homepage" above to see the poll on the right side of the page. The poll asks if the opposition should force an immediate election.

Hung Pham, the MIA MLA, has decided not to run in the next provincial election. Citing disgust in the way that the party has treated his riding association, Pham announced his decision in a letter to the provincial Progressive Conservative party. It's now up to the riding association to either call a nomination meeting or have Ed Stelmach appoint someone to be the candidate. It is interesting to note that the article states that Stelmach would not have appointed Pham.

With the flow of half-truth and outright lies coming out of the PMO since the last election, it's amazing anyone believes anything that comes out of Harper's mouth. There's further evidence that this lack of credibility is starting to flow into the media as a whole. Buried in this CP story is this quote about Sandra Buckler, the PM's communication director, with respect to what she said about the government not knowing about the halt of prisoner transfers in Afganistan:
Some news organizations gave little prominence to her remarks because they simply assumed them to be untrue.
When the MSM starts to disbelieve your press, you know the public has. No wonder the Harper Tories have been stalled in the polls.

The Tories finally have a candidate in Calgary-Egmont. Jonathan Denis took the second nomination meeting the Tories have run in the constituency. Since Denis is said to have deep ties to the party, it's unlikely he'd be "Chandlered" by the party executive. This leaves one riding in the city of Calgary that doesn't have a Tory nominated. That riding is Calgary-Montrose, the riding of the so-called MIA-MLA Hung Pham. There is no meeting scheduled for the riding since there is a dispute between the local riding association and the provincial Progressive Conservative party.

...about seeing your name on a campaign sign....

It would seem that George W. Bush, in an attempt to be remembered for something that doesn't have the word "worst" in it, is now pushing for a Middle East peace deal before he leaves office. The irony, of course, is the one person who's done the most to de-stabilize the region is now trying to make peace there, somewhere, somehow. It is most likely that any 11th hour effort on the part of the Bush administration to deal with a problem they've virtually ignored since taking office will fail, given that many, much better thought out attempts have failed. I think it is unlikely that any ham fisted attempt by Bush and Co. to force a settlement onto Israel and the various Palestinian factions will create even a short-term peace let alone anything lasting. This is due to several factors working against any peace process in the region.

As some of you may have gleaned from some previous posts, I'm a bit of an amateur astronomer. Generally I work in the radio part of the spectrum, but recently have moved into shorter wavelength visual work. To that end I purchased a 12.7cm (5 inch) telescope last summer. I've done some prime focus work and some eyepiece projection work, but also wanted to do some piggyback work, as even a relatively small telescope such as mine doesn't see a lot of the sky at once. This can be rectified by piggybacking a camera on the telescope and using the camera lenses, which have a much greater field of view.